Caffeine Challenge #28
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Prompts:
1) Song prompt: Serial Killer by Moncrieff X judge
2) Dialogue prompt: “No, that wasn’t hazing, orange really does flatter you.”
3) Image Prompt:
1) Song prompt: Serial Killer by Moncrieff X judge
2) Dialogue prompt: “No, that wasn’t hazing, orange really does flatter you.”
3) Image Prompt:
He opened his eyes. “She told me a few months before she passed that she was glad you didn’t know anything. She thought that it was for the better that you were left without the burden of having to watch her suffer and left with the memories of her being happy and healthy with her husband and children.”
“I would have preferred to have gotten to say goodbye, though,” Salto choked out and Lennix fought the sudden welling of tears as he swallowed against the lump in his throat. “Why had I been so stubborn?”
“I never got the chance to say goodbye to my niece and nephew,” he offered lamely, trying - and failing - to deny the emotions trying to drown him. “They were all dead by the time help arrived.”
Salto’s hand clenched in his hair and he welcomed the pinpricks of pain from his hair being pulled. It helped against the tears, or so he told himself. “How had they died? Drunk driver? Icy roads?”
“Casualty of a villain battle.” Salto stiffened under him but he didn’t give him the chance to dwell on it. “Trigger was thrown onto the highway where he and Celestial went at it. Cars occupied and not were thrown this way and that with chunks of concrete.”
A strange stillness settled over Salto. The man’s body hadn’t changed but his magic had, stilling in a way that left Lennix fretting. But before he could ask anything, Salto was speaking. “You were there.”
Lennix closed his eyes again, the burning tears making it impossible to see anyways. North started to slowly lick his palm. “Yes,” he finally admitted after a long pause, the wind letting him know he was crying by cooling the wet streaks on his face. “Sprite and I were only a few seconds behind them. We immediately went into evacuation and rescue mode but we were ill equipped and already things were flying. The best we could do was stop other vehicles from being smashed. We caught a bus between the two of us but a shipper from some random semi got past our notice and demolished a few vehicles. I found out later that the car that had been completely smashed had been my brother-in-law’s.”
Salto crumpled behind him and Lennix moved to let the man have his own weight only to find Salto had wrapped himself around Lennix’s shoulders, wet face pressed into his neck. “I’m so sorry.” The grip around him tightened. “I’m….so sorry.”
He choked on the sob that ripped itself from him and he tried to fight the ones that followed to no avail. Years of grief he had thought he had handled just fine came rushing back and it was all he could do not to shatter in Salto’s arms.
He felt drained when he finally stopped crying. Too lethargic to care, he was surprised when Salto clambered to his feet. The other offered him a hand as North got up as well. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”
Lennix took Salto’s hand.
When he awoke the following morning, it was to foggy memories of what had happened the night before. He knew that he had told Salto of the deaths in his family since they had last seen each other, knew that Salto had made them food and gotten him in bed, but he couldn’t remember any details, if anything else had happened, or actually living through it.
He pushed himself upright, rubbing at his face. He wasn’t as exhausted as he had half expected. He looked to the other side of the bed when he heard shifting.
Salto was still asleep next to him, face appearing younger in sleep. Faint scars were stark on the other’s skin, each telling a story. He traced the few he knew he had placed on that perfect form, letting himself remember how he had given them, and followed his fingers with his lips, kissing apologies to each one.
“Sap.”
He all but smiled against Salto’s skin at the groggy, snide comment and offered in reply, “Can’t help it. Last I checked, though, you’re the one that turned me into a sap.”
Salto rolled onto his back, exposing a bare chest that had more scars than the other side did. He traced a nasty one, trying to remember if he had done it or not.
“Celestial, four years ago.”
He hummed in acknowledgement. He kissed it, grateful it hadn’t been fatal.
Salto’s hand found his hair. Lennix leaned into the touch even as he kissed another scar.
Both of their phones went off.
Lennix straightened as Salto sat up. Confusion pulled at his face as he reached over and picked his up. He heard Salto grab his.
For a long moment, there was silence between them as they both stared at their screens. When the words couldn’t stick any more, Lennix brought his gaze up to meet Salto’s finding his own confusion reflected in the other’s frown. He opened and closed his mouth but the words were stuck in his throat. He tried to say anything.
“What do we do?”
The words were weak, thick with conflicted emotions, and Salto looked down at his phone. “We do what we have to.”
“But I don’t want to fight you,” Lennix confessed, the words no stronger than the last.
Salto kissed him. “And you won’t. I’m not going in to respond to Brazen’s summons. I’m going in to help make sure as few people as possible lose their lives in this folly.”
Lennix shook his head. “Kingsman’s going to expect me on the front lines.”
The smile Salto sent him eased some of his worries. “Then I’ll watch your back as I get people out of there.”
Lennix nodded feeling lost still but not alone. He got out of bed with Salto and dressed as the other used his magic to change. In 15 minutes, they were dressed in their respective outfits standing at Lennix’s bedroom door.
“What color do you want to paint the room?”
“Hmm?” Salto responded as the door flashed.
“The bedroom,” Lennix explained. He knew it was weird but he was desperate. “I don’t care for the color but I’ve never settled on one to repaint it with. When we get back, do you want to go look at paint colors?”
Salto paused with his hand on the doorknob. A beat and then Salto was looking back at him with a soft smile. “We’re going to be ok, Lennix.”
He tried to give Salto a flat look but he was sure his uncertainty was showing. “I know that. Why do you think I’m trying to make plans for when this whole fiasco is over?”
Salto chuckled, kissing him briefly. “I would love to go looking at paint with you,” he replied. “The kitchen needs to be repainted anyways.”
Lennix beamed because, if nothing else, that meant Salto was going to be around long enough that the kitchen paint was going to annoy him to no end.
The door opened onto a battlefield in the middle of a metropolis. The wind brought him screams and sirens, cries of anguish and pain, shouts for loved ones and against antagonizers. It brought to him the shouts in battle, the rippling of powers beings used, and the sound of movement.
He beat his wings against the air, ending the stream of sounds for a moment.
“Be careful out there. Brazen’s in this battle and may be looking to end things,” Salto warned him.
Lennix nodded. “You too. The other heroes may not hesitate to take a shot at you.”
As if to make a point, something solid and fast slammed into Salto. Lennix spun on the ball of his foot to face the attacker only to find himself facing down Brazen himself.
“Well, well, well,” the older man drawled, a feral grin on his face. “Look what the witch dragged in; a postal owl. Here to take my letter to Kingsman, pigeon?”
He shifted into a better stance, his feet scraping gravel across the pavement. “I’d rather not, thanks,” he shot back even as terror pulsed through him.
Brazen chuckled. “Pity.” The man glared at him while the grin only grew. “You don’t have a choice.”
Pain.
White hot pain.
All he knew was the burning, white hot pain and a weird echo in his being, like the wind telling him someone was screaming but refusing to tell him who. A flare of pain and suddenly he was face down on the cold, rough pavement as Brazen’s hands seared right through his wings near the shoulders. He screamed and screamed some more. Another flare of pain and it vanished, leaving him cold, worn, and twitching. There was noise and he could feel the wind.
He couldn’t hear the wind.
He choked on a sob.
He couldn’t hear the wind.
Something searing hot grabbed his head, ripping a scream from his throat as he was pulled off the ground. Something was talking in his ear and pain from his back made him twitch. He forced one eye open.
Why was Salto behind restrained?
He opened his other eye despite the pain he was in.
Why was Salto crying? Screaming, even?
Pain erupted within him. It was so much that he couldn’t even tell where it came from as he blacked out.
When he came to, it was to the wind’s gentle caress urging him awake. He wasn’t sure why it was waking him. He was in too much pain to even believe he had a chance to live, not to mention a life without wings terrified him. Still, he used what energy he had to open his eyes.
The view was sideways. He was laying on the broken street looking down the main thoroughfare void of the crowds.
Instead, he saw Salto standing where Lennix had last seen him and even as his eyes fell closed again, the image was seared into his brain.
Now he knew why he had been so vital, why Kingsman got to him before Brazen could, why Seer had said that he was important.
The image seared into his dying mind was that of Salto hovering a few feet of the ground arched slightly backwards with his arms spread at his side as destructive magic poured out of him in a tangle of colors.
Salto’s face had been in a scream, the tears rising off his cheeks with the magic that poured out of him, coloring those beautiful eyes with pure light.
He woke to the wind’s gentle caress. He blinked and sat up, finding himself not where he had last been and certainly not where he would have thought he would have been instead. Getting up, he crossed to the curtains and threw them open.
It was still early morning, meaning the mountain forest view was still thick with fog and dark against the brightening sky.
He jumped when something brushed against his arm and he spun only to find the thing that had brushed his arm was a wing. His wing. He stumbled over his own feet to get to the bathroom. He used the bathroom sink to keep himself upright as he stared into the mirror.
His wings were there and looked undamaged. He stretched them this way and that and found that they felt as great as they had always been, as if what he had experienced had been nothing more than a dream.
He grabbed at his shirt frantically.
The scar was still violently red raw but it was healed and with no pain. He shuddered at the memory of Brazen burying his hand in his gut, burning him alive from the inside.
Out of the pain and anguish, he really could remember the battle clearly. He hadn’t had a chance and never imagined he would. He shuddered at the reminder of the horrors he had gone through but he was still baffled. How was he alive, let alone with wings once more? Brazen had taken them from him, had removed them by his own hand burning through flesh and bone.
He wandered back into the bedroom, looking around.
There was no sign of Salto anywhere. He turned to check the rest of the house when he realized the paint color was different.
Tears surged to his eyes and they burned as he swallowed them down. No, he was not going to think that. Not until he checked.
There was the sound of something fluttering and the mostly still air moved enough to tell him to turn around.
A letter rested on his pillow perfectly centered and looking strangely out of place.
He moved to pick it up.
The door behind him opened, startling a scream out of him.
“Holy-don’t do that!”
Lennix stared at Salto as the man stood in the doorway, a tray clenched between a pair of shaking hands. Color had rushed the other’s face in a show of fury and Lennix found he couldn’t keep himself upright anymore.
“Lennix!”
Familiar hands caught him before he collapsed to the ground and he grabbed at the other, pulling him close and sucking in a deep breath of the smell that clung to Salto that was all his own. He pressed his forehead to the other’s neck, seeking and finding the familiar thrum of magic beneath Salto’s skin.
“For a moment, I thought-”
Lennix cut his own words off and he felt Salto tighten his hold. It was weird. He knew this was Salto but there wasn’t the feeling of magic desperately fighting against an invisible barrier in Salto’s aura. It was calmer, soothing even, with the same thrum of energy that ran through Salto’s veins.
“I had, for a moment,” Salto confessed, fingers curling into the back of Lennix’s shirt. “When he dropped you with that hole in your chest, I thought you had died and a part of me died with you in that moment. Something within me snapped and I felt like I was dying, dying because you weren’t there to try again, you weren’t there to think about how your day may be going.” Lennix felt him choke on the next words and still push through. “Because you weren’t there to go paint shopping anymore after you had planned the stupid trip.”
“But I’m alive,” Lennix reminded him, even as his confusion on the matter spilled into the words.
Salto’s laugh came out watery and sorrow filled. “Just barely. When I finally came back to myself, it was because Brazen had gotten through whatever storm I was creating with my magic and punched me in the face. I don’t know how that knocked the senses back into me, but it worked. I was suddenly focused, pissed, and with magic at a level I had never thought possible. I was able to take Brazen down, ending it all by ridding him of his ability and altering his memory in a way I hadn’t even known existed.” Salto took in a shuddering breath. “Kingsman had shown up at some point and had brought along a healer that was keeping you alive. When Kingsman came and gathered Brazen up in a tight hug, I went to your side. There was still so much damage but I could fix it. I could feel it in my soul that I could repair all of it. So I did. Your wings were reattached but still had burn scars and the wound in your chest wasn’t threatening your life when I was stopped. Had I gone on, I would have killed myself and I hadn’t even realized it till Kingsman grabbed my arm and broke my concentration. I was hospitalized after that to make sure that there weren’t any serious repercussions beyond magical exhaustion.”
Lennix doubted that was all Salto had been hospitalized for but let it be as he pulled back and cupped the other’s face. He offered the other an encouraging smile. “You did amazing, Salto. I’m so proud of you.”
Salto gave him a tight smile that didn’t even reach his eyes. “You say that but you’ve been in a coma for five weeks. I painted the whole house just waiting for you to wake up.”
Lennix laughed at that. Salto let out a manic sort of chuckle but it was enough and Salto relaxed as the chuckle turned into a proper laugh. “I can’t believe I painted the whole house. And It wasn’t even with magic. It was like I was suddenly possessed to repaint every room in the house and then some by hand. Did all of it in a week.”
“Did you sleep?” Lennix squawked in worry.
That seemed to rid Salto of the last of the manic for now as he laughed. “Not a wink,” he stated proudly with a grin. “I crashed when I couldn’t see straight anymore and ate when North bugged me for food.” The grin softened into a smile, running a hand through Lennix’s hair. “And, honestly? It was the best thing I could have done. It calmed me down, let me feel productive and successful, and let me get on with everything else that needed tending to afterwards.”
Lennix shook his head even as a chuckle bubbled out of him. “At least you seemed to have picked colors I like. This room’s not a horrible orange color like I feared you might pick.”
The smacking was totally worth it.
“So why didn’t I wake up at the hospital?”
“You did.” Salto placed the plate of light food on the table before him. “But it would seem that you hadn’t come fully out of it, though you had seemed rather coherent. You recognized me, said my name, and had even asked the doctor to send you home.” Salto tapped his fork against his plate. “I’m honestly surprised you don’t remember it.”
Lennix shrugged, scooping up a bite. “What happened to Brazen?”
“I’m not sure. Kingsman asked me to rid him of his ability too, saying something about wanting to be on Brazen’s level and live the normal life they had both been robbed.”
Lennix let that sink in as he ate a few bites. “And the public?”
“They believe that the two of them finished each other off in a final showdown and that the rest of the fighting had petered out on its own. Unknown has contacted me a few times since letting me know that In-Sight Us was being taken down from the inside out. As of yesterday, In-Sight Us no longer exists.”
Lennix stared at Salto. “Seriously?”
Salto nodded. “Seer says it’ll be a few more weeks before Heroes Unite disbands under the radar as well out of no longer being needed.”
Lennix looked back down at his plate. “Then, it’s over.”
“Seems like it.”
Lennix snapped his gaze up, blurting, “Do you want to move in?”
Salto choked on his bite and despite the ranting that followed suit, Salto said yes.
“I would have preferred to have gotten to say goodbye, though,” Salto choked out and Lennix fought the sudden welling of tears as he swallowed against the lump in his throat. “Why had I been so stubborn?”
“I never got the chance to say goodbye to my niece and nephew,” he offered lamely, trying - and failing - to deny the emotions trying to drown him. “They were all dead by the time help arrived.”
Salto’s hand clenched in his hair and he welcomed the pinpricks of pain from his hair being pulled. It helped against the tears, or so he told himself. “How had they died? Drunk driver? Icy roads?”
“Casualty of a villain battle.” Salto stiffened under him but he didn’t give him the chance to dwell on it. “Trigger was thrown onto the highway where he and Celestial went at it. Cars occupied and not were thrown this way and that with chunks of concrete.”
A strange stillness settled over Salto. The man’s body hadn’t changed but his magic had, stilling in a way that left Lennix fretting. But before he could ask anything, Salto was speaking. “You were there.”
Lennix closed his eyes again, the burning tears making it impossible to see anyways. North started to slowly lick his palm. “Yes,” he finally admitted after a long pause, the wind letting him know he was crying by cooling the wet streaks on his face. “Sprite and I were only a few seconds behind them. We immediately went into evacuation and rescue mode but we were ill equipped and already things were flying. The best we could do was stop other vehicles from being smashed. We caught a bus between the two of us but a shipper from some random semi got past our notice and demolished a few vehicles. I found out later that the car that had been completely smashed had been my brother-in-law’s.”
Salto crumpled behind him and Lennix moved to let the man have his own weight only to find Salto had wrapped himself around Lennix’s shoulders, wet face pressed into his neck. “I’m so sorry.” The grip around him tightened. “I’m….so sorry.”
He choked on the sob that ripped itself from him and he tried to fight the ones that followed to no avail. Years of grief he had thought he had handled just fine came rushing back and it was all he could do not to shatter in Salto’s arms.
He felt drained when he finally stopped crying. Too lethargic to care, he was surprised when Salto clambered to his feet. The other offered him a hand as North got up as well. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”
Lennix took Salto’s hand.
When he awoke the following morning, it was to foggy memories of what had happened the night before. He knew that he had told Salto of the deaths in his family since they had last seen each other, knew that Salto had made them food and gotten him in bed, but he couldn’t remember any details, if anything else had happened, or actually living through it.
He pushed himself upright, rubbing at his face. He wasn’t as exhausted as he had half expected. He looked to the other side of the bed when he heard shifting.
Salto was still asleep next to him, face appearing younger in sleep. Faint scars were stark on the other’s skin, each telling a story. He traced the few he knew he had placed on that perfect form, letting himself remember how he had given them, and followed his fingers with his lips, kissing apologies to each one.
“Sap.”
He all but smiled against Salto’s skin at the groggy, snide comment and offered in reply, “Can’t help it. Last I checked, though, you’re the one that turned me into a sap.”
Salto rolled onto his back, exposing a bare chest that had more scars than the other side did. He traced a nasty one, trying to remember if he had done it or not.
“Celestial, four years ago.”
He hummed in acknowledgement. He kissed it, grateful it hadn’t been fatal.
Salto’s hand found his hair. Lennix leaned into the touch even as he kissed another scar.
Both of their phones went off.
Lennix straightened as Salto sat up. Confusion pulled at his face as he reached over and picked his up. He heard Salto grab his.
For a long moment, there was silence between them as they both stared at their screens. When the words couldn’t stick any more, Lennix brought his gaze up to meet Salto’s finding his own confusion reflected in the other’s frown. He opened and closed his mouth but the words were stuck in his throat. He tried to say anything.
“What do we do?”
The words were weak, thick with conflicted emotions, and Salto looked down at his phone. “We do what we have to.”
“But I don’t want to fight you,” Lennix confessed, the words no stronger than the last.
Salto kissed him. “And you won’t. I’m not going in to respond to Brazen’s summons. I’m going in to help make sure as few people as possible lose their lives in this folly.”
Lennix shook his head. “Kingsman’s going to expect me on the front lines.”
The smile Salto sent him eased some of his worries. “Then I’ll watch your back as I get people out of there.”
Lennix nodded feeling lost still but not alone. He got out of bed with Salto and dressed as the other used his magic to change. In 15 minutes, they were dressed in their respective outfits standing at Lennix’s bedroom door.
“What color do you want to paint the room?”
“Hmm?” Salto responded as the door flashed.
“The bedroom,” Lennix explained. He knew it was weird but he was desperate. “I don’t care for the color but I’ve never settled on one to repaint it with. When we get back, do you want to go look at paint colors?”
Salto paused with his hand on the doorknob. A beat and then Salto was looking back at him with a soft smile. “We’re going to be ok, Lennix.”
He tried to give Salto a flat look but he was sure his uncertainty was showing. “I know that. Why do you think I’m trying to make plans for when this whole fiasco is over?”
Salto chuckled, kissing him briefly. “I would love to go looking at paint with you,” he replied. “The kitchen needs to be repainted anyways.”
Lennix beamed because, if nothing else, that meant Salto was going to be around long enough that the kitchen paint was going to annoy him to no end.
The door opened onto a battlefield in the middle of a metropolis. The wind brought him screams and sirens, cries of anguish and pain, shouts for loved ones and against antagonizers. It brought to him the shouts in battle, the rippling of powers beings used, and the sound of movement.
He beat his wings against the air, ending the stream of sounds for a moment.
“Be careful out there. Brazen’s in this battle and may be looking to end things,” Salto warned him.
Lennix nodded. “You too. The other heroes may not hesitate to take a shot at you.”
As if to make a point, something solid and fast slammed into Salto. Lennix spun on the ball of his foot to face the attacker only to find himself facing down Brazen himself.
“Well, well, well,” the older man drawled, a feral grin on his face. “Look what the witch dragged in; a postal owl. Here to take my letter to Kingsman, pigeon?”
He shifted into a better stance, his feet scraping gravel across the pavement. “I’d rather not, thanks,” he shot back even as terror pulsed through him.
Brazen chuckled. “Pity.” The man glared at him while the grin only grew. “You don’t have a choice.”
Pain.
White hot pain.
All he knew was the burning, white hot pain and a weird echo in his being, like the wind telling him someone was screaming but refusing to tell him who. A flare of pain and suddenly he was face down on the cold, rough pavement as Brazen’s hands seared right through his wings near the shoulders. He screamed and screamed some more. Another flare of pain and it vanished, leaving him cold, worn, and twitching. There was noise and he could feel the wind.
He couldn’t hear the wind.
He choked on a sob.
He couldn’t hear the wind.
Something searing hot grabbed his head, ripping a scream from his throat as he was pulled off the ground. Something was talking in his ear and pain from his back made him twitch. He forced one eye open.
Why was Salto behind restrained?
He opened his other eye despite the pain he was in.
Why was Salto crying? Screaming, even?
Pain erupted within him. It was so much that he couldn’t even tell where it came from as he blacked out.
When he came to, it was to the wind’s gentle caress urging him awake. He wasn’t sure why it was waking him. He was in too much pain to even believe he had a chance to live, not to mention a life without wings terrified him. Still, he used what energy he had to open his eyes.
The view was sideways. He was laying on the broken street looking down the main thoroughfare void of the crowds.
Instead, he saw Salto standing where Lennix had last seen him and even as his eyes fell closed again, the image was seared into his brain.
Now he knew why he had been so vital, why Kingsman got to him before Brazen could, why Seer had said that he was important.
The image seared into his dying mind was that of Salto hovering a few feet of the ground arched slightly backwards with his arms spread at his side as destructive magic poured out of him in a tangle of colors.
Salto’s face had been in a scream, the tears rising off his cheeks with the magic that poured out of him, coloring those beautiful eyes with pure light.
He woke to the wind’s gentle caress. He blinked and sat up, finding himself not where he had last been and certainly not where he would have thought he would have been instead. Getting up, he crossed to the curtains and threw them open.
It was still early morning, meaning the mountain forest view was still thick with fog and dark against the brightening sky.
He jumped when something brushed against his arm and he spun only to find the thing that had brushed his arm was a wing. His wing. He stumbled over his own feet to get to the bathroom. He used the bathroom sink to keep himself upright as he stared into the mirror.
His wings were there and looked undamaged. He stretched them this way and that and found that they felt as great as they had always been, as if what he had experienced had been nothing more than a dream.
He grabbed at his shirt frantically.
The scar was still violently red raw but it was healed and with no pain. He shuddered at the memory of Brazen burying his hand in his gut, burning him alive from the inside.
Out of the pain and anguish, he really could remember the battle clearly. He hadn’t had a chance and never imagined he would. He shuddered at the reminder of the horrors he had gone through but he was still baffled. How was he alive, let alone with wings once more? Brazen had taken them from him, had removed them by his own hand burning through flesh and bone.
He wandered back into the bedroom, looking around.
There was no sign of Salto anywhere. He turned to check the rest of the house when he realized the paint color was different.
Tears surged to his eyes and they burned as he swallowed them down. No, he was not going to think that. Not until he checked.
There was the sound of something fluttering and the mostly still air moved enough to tell him to turn around.
A letter rested on his pillow perfectly centered and looking strangely out of place.
He moved to pick it up.
The door behind him opened, startling a scream out of him.
“Holy-don’t do that!”
Lennix stared at Salto as the man stood in the doorway, a tray clenched between a pair of shaking hands. Color had rushed the other’s face in a show of fury and Lennix found he couldn’t keep himself upright anymore.
“Lennix!”
Familiar hands caught him before he collapsed to the ground and he grabbed at the other, pulling him close and sucking in a deep breath of the smell that clung to Salto that was all his own. He pressed his forehead to the other’s neck, seeking and finding the familiar thrum of magic beneath Salto’s skin.
“For a moment, I thought-”
Lennix cut his own words off and he felt Salto tighten his hold. It was weird. He knew this was Salto but there wasn’t the feeling of magic desperately fighting against an invisible barrier in Salto’s aura. It was calmer, soothing even, with the same thrum of energy that ran through Salto’s veins.
“I had, for a moment,” Salto confessed, fingers curling into the back of Lennix’s shirt. “When he dropped you with that hole in your chest, I thought you had died and a part of me died with you in that moment. Something within me snapped and I felt like I was dying, dying because you weren’t there to try again, you weren’t there to think about how your day may be going.” Lennix felt him choke on the next words and still push through. “Because you weren’t there to go paint shopping anymore after you had planned the stupid trip.”
“But I’m alive,” Lennix reminded him, even as his confusion on the matter spilled into the words.
Salto’s laugh came out watery and sorrow filled. “Just barely. When I finally came back to myself, it was because Brazen had gotten through whatever storm I was creating with my magic and punched me in the face. I don’t know how that knocked the senses back into me, but it worked. I was suddenly focused, pissed, and with magic at a level I had never thought possible. I was able to take Brazen down, ending it all by ridding him of his ability and altering his memory in a way I hadn’t even known existed.” Salto took in a shuddering breath. “Kingsman had shown up at some point and had brought along a healer that was keeping you alive. When Kingsman came and gathered Brazen up in a tight hug, I went to your side. There was still so much damage but I could fix it. I could feel it in my soul that I could repair all of it. So I did. Your wings were reattached but still had burn scars and the wound in your chest wasn’t threatening your life when I was stopped. Had I gone on, I would have killed myself and I hadn’t even realized it till Kingsman grabbed my arm and broke my concentration. I was hospitalized after that to make sure that there weren’t any serious repercussions beyond magical exhaustion.”
Lennix doubted that was all Salto had been hospitalized for but let it be as he pulled back and cupped the other’s face. He offered the other an encouraging smile. “You did amazing, Salto. I’m so proud of you.”
Salto gave him a tight smile that didn’t even reach his eyes. “You say that but you’ve been in a coma for five weeks. I painted the whole house just waiting for you to wake up.”
Lennix laughed at that. Salto let out a manic sort of chuckle but it was enough and Salto relaxed as the chuckle turned into a proper laugh. “I can’t believe I painted the whole house. And It wasn’t even with magic. It was like I was suddenly possessed to repaint every room in the house and then some by hand. Did all of it in a week.”
“Did you sleep?” Lennix squawked in worry.
That seemed to rid Salto of the last of the manic for now as he laughed. “Not a wink,” he stated proudly with a grin. “I crashed when I couldn’t see straight anymore and ate when North bugged me for food.” The grin softened into a smile, running a hand through Lennix’s hair. “And, honestly? It was the best thing I could have done. It calmed me down, let me feel productive and successful, and let me get on with everything else that needed tending to afterwards.”
Lennix shook his head even as a chuckle bubbled out of him. “At least you seemed to have picked colors I like. This room’s not a horrible orange color like I feared you might pick.”
The smacking was totally worth it.
“So why didn’t I wake up at the hospital?”
“You did.” Salto placed the plate of light food on the table before him. “But it would seem that you hadn’t come fully out of it, though you had seemed rather coherent. You recognized me, said my name, and had even asked the doctor to send you home.” Salto tapped his fork against his plate. “I’m honestly surprised you don’t remember it.”
Lennix shrugged, scooping up a bite. “What happened to Brazen?”
“I’m not sure. Kingsman asked me to rid him of his ability too, saying something about wanting to be on Brazen’s level and live the normal life they had both been robbed.”
Lennix let that sink in as he ate a few bites. “And the public?”
“They believe that the two of them finished each other off in a final showdown and that the rest of the fighting had petered out on its own. Unknown has contacted me a few times since letting me know that In-Sight Us was being taken down from the inside out. As of yesterday, In-Sight Us no longer exists.”
Lennix stared at Salto. “Seriously?”
Salto nodded. “Seer says it’ll be a few more weeks before Heroes Unite disbands under the radar as well out of no longer being needed.”
Lennix looked back down at his plate. “Then, it’s over.”
“Seems like it.”
Lennix snapped his gaze up, blurting, “Do you want to move in?”
Salto choked on his bite and despite the ranting that followed suit, Salto said yes.